St. Ann’s Warehouse Breaks In New Space With ‘Mies Julie’

Hilda Cronje (left) and Bongile Mantsai in ‘Mies Julie’ at St. Ann’s Warehouse.

“Is that fog or haze?”

St. Ann’s Warehouse artistic director Susan Feldman asked that question to set and lighting designer Patrick Curtis, less than 72 hours before the first performance in the company’s new venue at 29 Jay Street in Brooklyn. It seemed like a mundane question with a major deadline approaching, but it was evidence of how smoothly everything was going elsewhere.

Her smoke-based question pertained to a special effect for the space’s opening production, “Mies Julie.” A South African adaptation and expansion of August Strindberg’s sexually charged “Miss Julie,” the play is reset from 19th century Sweden to present day in the barren karoo, where the restless daughter of an oppressive Boer farmer escalates the sexual attraction between her and an African worker.

Originally mounted by the Baxter Theatre Centre in Cape Town, “Mies Julie” was a hit at this summer’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival, prompting a quick decision by Feldman to inaugurate the new St. Ann’s space with the production. It opens tonight and will run through Dec. 2.

“It’s very bold, very sexy,” Feldman said. “It captured a sense of South Africa in a way we don’t know in America, and it’s not taken from one point of view or another. Within two weeks of seeing it, we booked it.”

While that may have accelerated the timetable for opening – St. Ann’s had originally planned a “soft opening” with a few concerts, followed by a full launch with “Opus No. 7″ from Russia in January – Feldman thought it would be worth it. “I didn’t want to end this conversation about ‘Mies Julie’ and start again in May.”

As of last Tuesday, there was wet paint in ample evidence in public areas and stencils awaiting paint for signage, even as the “Mies Julie” team was running a dry tech and awaiting the arrival of the actors for the first time (the show had been touring, and so it required minimal rehearsal in Brooklyn). Fortunately, although they had been under an evacuation order from Hurricane Sandy, the new venue was left untouched, requiring only minimal compression of production time on the show.

The 29 Jay Street venue is officially a three-year interim space for St. Ann’s while it works to secure and develop Brooklyn’s old Tobacco Warehouse near its former 38 Water Street home.

“When I went into the church [where the company was founded],” Feldman said, “I had no idea that it would be for 21 years. Water Street was a temporary space for 12 years. We know there’s a future beyond three years, assuming conversion works in the Tobacco Warehouse. But we have made our new theater to work just as our last theater functioned.”

Indeed, the two venues are similar, and similarly flexible. While the stage and seating for “Mies Julie” echoes that used for Daniel Kitson’s recent show, the layout for “Opus No. 7″ will resemble the expansive playing area of “Black Watch.”

“When we packed up Water Street, we realized that we’d only built one and a half walls there. It helped me not to feel tremendous loss,” Feldman said.

The new venue required steel work in order to hang a lighting grid, curtains and support future scenery, a new set of exit stairs and the rehanging of heating units. Unlike more polished arts complexes, the work on Jay Street was economical. “The fit out here took between $900,000 and $1 million,” said Feldman, adding that was exclusive of rent. It did result in some adjustment, such as a merging of the box office and production office into a single space, or, in Feldman’s compression, “the prox office.”

Despite producing in an untested space, the adapter and director of “Mies Julie,” Yael Farber, said that she wasn’t subjected to restrictions, comparing the space to a “widening aperture.” “The conversation was always ‘how does the space accommodate the work’,” said Farber, upon arrival for the first time at St. Ann’s. “Not ‘how does the work accommodate the space’.”

The move is only a few blocks from St. Ann’s previous space at 38 Water Street, and its potential future space at the Tobacco Warehouse. While there is the potential for audiences to feel a sense of dislocation, Feldman said that’s not the case, given the very public wrangling over the company’s search for a new home, necessitated by new development of the Water Street site.

“There was a lot of drama over the Tobacco Warehouse, so when we told our audiences [about 29 Jay Street], there was great relief and joy, especially from this side of DUMBO,” she said.

As mirrors and strip lights were being installed in makeshift dressing rooms (flexible dressing spaces being standard for all St. Ann’s productions) on Jay Street, the company’s executive director Andrew D. Hamingson said they had already begun the design process for their next home at Tobacco Warehouse, pending full approval of the site.

“The conversion process begins this month, and will take from six to nine months,” he said. “We are the designee for the land, which will be converted from parkland to land for private use, within Brooklyn Bridge Park. Then we can go forward with the lease. We expect the process to be favorable.”

This follows what was originally expected to be a more direct move to the Tobacco Warehouse, with the company operating on an itinerant basis for perhaps a year, that was scuttled when park regulatory issues came to light.

But perpetual change, show by show, and now perhaps theater by theater, seems to be the standard for St. Ann’s Warehouse. Describing the past few months, Feldman said, “We went from ‘Festen,’ to our Puppet Lab, to moving out, directly into our build here. It’s been an intensive six months for the staff and crew.”

From the perspective of an audience member attending only the second performance, on Friday evening, the transition was seamless, right down to the signs greeting patrons with the warning, “Theatrical haze and fog effects will be used in this production.”

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